The Pacific

Simon Butler, Green Left Weekly
During the United Nations Copenhagen climate summit in December, fresh allegations emerged that unscrupulous carbon traders were buying up the rights to the carbon stored in forests in Papua New Guinea from indigenous landowners.
One PNG man told the December 12 SBS news he was forced to sign up at the point of a gun.

Tahitipresse reported on December 20 that thousands of people marched in Papeete on December 19 to protest legislation before the French National Assembly dealing with compensation for victims of French nuclear testing in the area. The rally involved a broad range of people, including various political parties and church representatives.

Protesters were demanding the legislation be expanded to cover a wider area that was affected and a broader range of illnesses caused by the three decades of testing up until 1996 as well as the aftermath.

Professor Brij Lal is a Fijian historian and is part of the Division of Pacific and Asian History at the Australian National University. He was recently expelled from Fiji by the military government for speaking out against the regime’s expulsion of Australian diplomats on November 3.

He spoke to Green Left Weekly’s Aaron Roden about the character and contradictions of Fiji’s military dictatorship, led by coup leader Frank Bainimarama.

September 17, 2008: Cuba and 10 island-states of the Pacific region strengthened their cooperation and friendship ties after the conclusion in Havana on Tuesday of the First Bilateral Ministerial Meeting that took place at the Palco Hotel.
Speaking on behalf of the visiting delegations, the Prime Minister of Tuvalu, Apisai Lelemia, noted that climate change and the world food crisis are the real threats today for the host country and these small island-states.

"Blackbirding" is a racist euphemism for the forcible enslavement of Pacific islanders from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century, to work as indentured labourers in the sugar cane fields in Australia, Fiji, New Caledonia, and the Samoan Islands. Some 62,000 South Sea Islanders were taken to Australia through trickery and even kidnappings. They were ruthlessly exploited, racially abused and vilified, and most were later forcibly deported. A century later, Kevin Rudd's Labor government of Australia has introduced a pilot scheme Pacific "guest worker" scheme to do seasonal fruit and vegetable picking.

Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG): Australia has been accused of trying to fast-track new free trade negotiations with Pacific Island countries at a recent regional trade ministers' meeting in the Cook Islands (June 22, 2008).
Trade officials from the Pacific leaked details of the meeting to the Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) because they were outraged that an Australian trade delegation had tried to bully Pacific ministers to fast-track work on a new free trade agreement (FTA), said PANG coordinator Maureen Penjueli, who is based in Fiji.

Peter Boyle, Green Left Weekly: Here is a good news story. Five years after the Australian-led Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) military-political intervention began, this poor South Pacific nation has only one doctor per 10,000 people. But on June 12 the arrival of two Cuban doctors under a medical cooperation agreement, negotiated under the previous Manasseh Sogovare government, was greeted as “a blessing to the people of Solomon Islands" by the country's under secretary for health, Dr Cedric Alependava.

Editorial: The National, April 30, 2008
POWES Parkop has once again shown his realistic approach to governing the nation’s capital.
The National Capital District Governor has announced his intentions to have 50% of the NCDC Council vacancies filled by women.
It is worth mentioning that no other leader has been in a position where he can decree such a move but it is Powes Parkop who has seized the opportunity.